TEFL Haigler Nebraska

This topic is of a particular interest to me, as I must choose a course book for my upcoming esl course starting in the fall. I will have eight students of varying ability. They will be students in an extremely challenging academic environment. My course will be considered a support course that will accompany the traditional english course that all of their classmates will take. They have all taken the tesol exam, and have performed well. Although not so well in my opinion that they are ready to take on the likes of Macbeth and Beowulf! I am therefore going to use this opportunity to research a course book that provides the support required for my students, and their teacher, to be successful in our english endeavours. I am a proponent of using course books. It is clear that in recent years the educational industry has fine-tuned their course book packages. For a language learner in particular I think that it is clear that having access to an on-line laboratory that dovetails with both the textbook and the student workbook is an unbeatable combination. I like course books that have a lot of extras in the teacher's book: review printouts, quizzes, unit tests, extra listening resources, additional game or activity ideas adapted to each section. It is all about finding the right course book for the task at hand and that is my job now. I think that I will lean more toward finding a teacher Theory and Practice book for myself - These are the books that take you through both the basics and advanced methodologies of esl teaching, giving you advice and suggestion along the way right from setting aims, planning lessons and executing successful language and curriculum goals. (www.about.com) Although esl Theory Books would probably be very interesting, I don't think that we will have time to delve into these types of theories. These books take you through key aspects of esl theory such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, universal grammar and more. These are the books that will help you to understand what is going on inside your students' head - and why. One teacher Practice book that interests me is: ADULT EDUCATION esl teacherS guide Author: C. Ray Graham, Mark M. Walsh The manual contains a set of beginning lessons and intermediate level lessons that can be used for the first twenty to thirty hours of instruction in an esl class. These lessons form the basis for the teacher training part of the manual. They are accompanied by detailed instructions that will help to orient and train the teacher in using the basic techniques for teaching esl. The following are two course book possibilities for adult learners. This would probably be appropriate for my students who are all in their upper teens. The first is New Interchange series. They apparently cover all the different parts of english learning in smaller modules than usual. They are not photo heavy, but have enough colour in the book to make them comfortable to look at and not too daunting. They have conversation, vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening and discussion sections. There is also a teacher's manual with a few good ideas in it as well, and every chapter has a supplementary activity that can be useful. The second course book that comes very highly recommended on the Internet review site is: New english File series (Clive Oxenden and Christina Latham-Koenig, http://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile) which consists of Student's Book Student's Book MultiPACKs teacher's Book with Test and assessment CD-ROM Workbook with MultiROM (with and without key) Class Audio CDs iPack DVD Online Skills Practice The following is the review on the Amazon.com site : “New english File Upper-Intermediate gets your higher-level students talking. With texts that make students want to speak, plus full skills coverage, you can keep students motivated and challenged – specialist features cover high-level grammar and pronunciation accuracy. You can download lesson ideas and extra resources at the highly popular teacher's Site, and now there is completely new Online Skills Practice material for students.” It is clear that this is a course book series that works for all levels of english Language Learning. I plan to research this book more fully and hopefully it will be the correct one for me to use this fall. Having the appropriate course book for your class is essential as it makes the students more comfortable and the teacher more confident of where they are going with their class.